Buzz
For centuries, the realm of medical science remained enigmatic. The turning point came when physicians began educating their students using actual human cadavers, offering an intimate glimpse into the complexities of the human anatomy. The need for bodies surged, spawning a clandestine trade that lifted many from destitution—while condemning others to a grim fate, often on the very dissection tables they once supplied. While the notorious Scottish duo Burke and Hare are widely recognized, numerous other unsettling accounts of their counterparts exist.
10. Grandison Harris
Grandison Harris, an enslaved individual owned by the Medical College of Georgia, was officially employed as the institution’s porter and janitor after being purchased in 1852. Unofficially, he served as their grave robber. Known as a “resurrection man,” his enslaved status provided an unusual advantage in this macabre role—immunity from legal prosecution. For over five decades, Harris exhumed recently buried bodies, supplying the medical college with cadavers for dissection and study. His progressive employers equipped him with the necessary tools for his grim task and even taught him to read and write, enabling him to monitor newspaper obituaries independently.
Harris possessed an extraordinary talent for flower arrangement, a skill that proved invaluable when he had to reconstruct funeral bouquets after exhuming a body. Often, however, this wasn’t even necessary. One of his preferred locations was Cedar Grove Cemetery, where the poorest individuals were interred in coffins that could be easily smashed with an axe. Following the Civil War, Harris gained his freedom and education. He assumed the role of a judge in a small Georgia town, but the medical students he once supplied with cadavers never let him forget his origins, regardless of his daytime authority.
Harris persisted in his grave-robbing endeavors, negotiating agreements to provide the college with somewhat more legally obtained bodies from prisons and hospitals. In his later years, he passed on his grave-robbing expertise to his son, who eventually succeeded him at the institution. In 1908, Harris delivered a lecture at the college, sharing the secrets behind his success as a resurrection man. He passed away in 1911 and was laid to rest in Cedar Grove Cemetery, the very place where he had spent countless nights under the glow of lanterns. As a precaution, no grave marker exists—only a monument. The exact location of his burial remains a mystery.
9. The Plot To Steal Abraham Lincoln’s Body
Not all grave robbers were tied to the medical profession; some were motivated purely by self-interest. In the 1870s, Chicago was dominated by a counterfeiting ring led by “Big Jim” Kennally. Things ran smoothly until one of his best engravers was sentenced to a decade in Joliet Prison. Determined to free his associate, Kennally and his gang concocted a plan to steal Abraham Lincoln’s body and demand a ransom: $200,000 and the release of their imprisoned colleague.
Oddly enough, the two individuals Kennally enlisted for the grave-robbing operation had no prior experience in such activities. A coin forger and a tavern owner, they quickly realized they needed assistance and recruited a third accomplice. Unbeknownst to them, this man was an informant for the newly established Secret Service. While the informant played along with the scheme, he kept the authorities fully informed of every detail.
On the appointed night, the group made their way to the cemetery, broke the padlock on the crypt (since none of them could pick it), and were momentarily stumped by the heavy concrete slab sealing the tomb. Just as the Secret Service prepared to arrest them, an accidental gunshot alerted the would-be thieves to their presence. Thankfully, as history shows, these body snatchers weren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. They were captured after fleeing back to the saloon owner’s establishment.
8. Body Snatching In The Wrong Place
London Hospital was among numerous British institutions that utilized real human remains as educational tools for their students. A recent archaeological excavation at the site uncovered vast quantities of bones buried in unmarked graves behind the college, representing the remains of approximately 500 individuals. Many of these individuals had passed away within the hospital and were subsequently discarded after serving their purpose in medical studies. The high volume of patients who both lived and died at London Hospital placed it in a unique situation—it had an excess of bodies. As a result, the hospital began selling the surplus cadavers to other medical establishments.
While this might appear to be a practical way to generate additional income, it wasn’t entirely lawful. Consequently, most body removals were conducted under the cover of darkness. One individual, William Millard, may have fallen victim to this practice. In 1832, he was apprehended in the hospital’s burial grounds and accused of being a grave robber. Despite the lack of concrete evidence against him, the charges stuck. Millard ultimately died in prison, but his wife continued to assert his innocence long after his death. She maintained that he was merely collecting surplus bodies from the hospital to deliver to a buyer, arguing that his only mistake was being caught in an unfortunate situation while performing a task the hospital tacitly approved of but preferred to keep quiet.
7. John Scott Harrison
John Scott Harrison, the son of US President William Henry Harrison and father of President Benjamin Harrison, found himself at the heart of one of the most gruesome body-snatching incidents in American history. A respected congressman and family man, he passed away at 73 and was laid to rest in Congress Green Cemetery, near the Medical College of Ohio. During his burial, the family discovered that the grave of his recently deceased nephew, Augustus Devin, had been tampered with, and the body was missing.
Following the funeral, John Harrison, the son of the recently interred John Scott, accompanied by a local constable and armed with a search warrant, visited the Medical College of Ohio to search for his nephew’s missing body. Although only a few cadavers were present and nothing seemed overtly suspicious, the janitor guiding them appeared visibly uneasy. John might have left empty-handed had he not noticed something peculiar: a rope and pulley system leading to a lower level of the building. Upon hoisting the heavy rope, they discovered a body—but not the one they sought.
Instead, it was John Scott’s corpse, recently buried, then exhumed, and now horrifically mutilated. Confronted with his father’s desecrated remains, John launched a campaign against the college, which nearly incited mob violence. The institution defended its right to use cadavers for dissection, claiming ignorance of the bodies’ origins, but the controversy didn’t end there. The investigation also uncovered Augustus Devin’s body, decaying in a vat alongside approximately 40 others. Both John Scott and Augustus were reburied, and two local grave robbers were arrested. However, legal actions against the college yielded lackluster outcomes.
6. Bishop, May, And Williams
At times, cemeteries couldn’t supply enough fresh bodies to meet the demand of resurrectionists. John Bishop, a seasoned body snatcher with 12 years of experience, along with his accomplices, shifted from stealing corpses to creating their own. Some victims were easier targets than others. In November 1831, Bishop and his partners presented their latest acquisition to anatomy instructors at King’s College in London. While the instructors typically had no issue with repurposed bodies, they grew suspicious upon seeing the body of a young boy with distinctive head wounds. Stalling Bishop under the pretense of needing change for a £50 note, they alerted the police.
Investigations revealed that the group had targeted street children and beggars. Despite each member blaming the others and denying involvement, John Bishop, John May, and Thomas Williams were ultimately tried and convicted for the murders of 14-year-old Carlo Ferrari, 10-year-old Cunningham, and a 35-year-old woman. In addition to selling the bodies, the trio profited by extracting and selling teeth to dentists. Before his execution, Bishop boasted of facilitating the sale of 500 to 1,000 bodies. This grim tale inspired Charles Dickens, who incorporated the plight of orphaned beggar boys into several of his works, most notably The Pickwick Papers. The body snatchers were hanged, and their remains were handed over to medical students for dissection.
5. University Of Maryland And ‘Frank’
An 1828 recruitment advertisement from the University of Maryland School of Medicine boasted that the institution was “the Paris of America, where subjects are plentiful.” These subjects referred to cadavers, and the abundance of bodies was attributed to a man known only as “Frank.” While his surname remains a mystery, Frank’s skill in procuring corpses was extensively documented in correspondence between faculty members and college staff.
Frank’s preferred hunting ground was reportedly the Westminster Burying Ground, where he allegedly collected so many bodies that the school ended up with a surplus. According to letters from Dr. Nathan Ryno Smith, excess cadavers were sold to other institutions. To preserve the bodies during transport and prevent decomposition (and odor), they were packed in whiskey barrels. Legend has it that upon arrival, students, unwilling to let good whiskey go to waste, drank it. Another version of the tale claims Frank bottled the used whiskey and sold it to local taverns.
Not everyone supported the use of human cadavers for medical education, and by 1831, Frank began fearing for his safety. Local residents had long protested the school’s practices, and one of its original buildings had been attacked and burned down by an enraged mob. The new structure, Davidge Hall, constructed in 1812, featured hidden passages and trapdoors for emergency escapes. One cadaver remains on-site to this day, and his name is Hermie.
4. Elizabeth Ross
While grave robbing was predominantly a male-dominated field, one woman met the same grim fate as infamous figures like Burke and Hare. Elizabeth Ross was tried, convicted, and executed, her body handed over to the same medical students she had allegedly supplied. Her crime was the murder of her family’s lodger. Trial records depict Ross as a notorious gin enthusiast and thief, described as a large, burly, almost masculine Irish woman with the strength to commit such a brutal act and transport the body to sell to the London Hospital.
Ross, however, claimed she last saw the lodger alive in the company of her 12-year-old son and his father, Edward Cook. The evidence against her was virtually nonexistent, and it seemed her son, who testified against her, was more concerned with protecting his father than his mother. A pre-execution sketch of Ross revealed a relatively petite woman, contradicting earlier descriptions. Despite the lack of concrete evidence, she was convicted by a city all too familiar with nocturnal grave robberies and murders. Rumors circulated that neighborhood cats often vanished near Ross’s home, painting her as the type of person capable of such atrocities for financial gain. Regardless of her guilt, Ross was executed and ended up on the dissection table.
3. So How Much Did They Make?
Grave robbing wasn’t just illegal; it was also ethically, morally, and religiously contentious. Those who engaged in body snatching occupied the lowest rungs of society, and many had little to lose. But how much did they earn, and was it truly worth the risk? Records from the early 19th century indicate that a standard adult corpse in London fetched around four pounds and four shillings, equivalent to approximately $447 today. The body that led to the downfall of Bishop and May was priced at nine guineas, or roughly $1,469 in modern currency. As noted by the Blenheim Street School, the rising demand for cadavers had significantly inflated prices; students who once paid two guineas (about $319) could later face costs as high as 16 guineas ($2,235) when they became instructors.
With an increasing number of universities relying on cadavers for teaching, institutions had to either meet the grave robbers’ demands or risk losing the bodies to rival schools. Beyond selling entire corpses, many body snatchers also extracted teeth to sell separately to dentists. Historical records reveal that dentists paid up to five pounds (around $560) for a complete set of teeth. For those struggling to make ends meet in the early 1800s, it was a lucrative trade—if one could endure the gruesome nature of the work.
2. Saved By The Body Snatchers
The fear of having one’s body stolen after death was compounded by the equally terrifying prospect of being buried alive during the same era. A chilling account from a broadsheet newspaper detailed how John Macintire experienced this very horror on April 15, 1824. According to the story, Macintire remained conscious throughout his family’s vigil at his supposed deathbed and the mourning at his wake. He recalled being sealed in his coffin, carried to the cemetery, and helplessly listening as dirt was shoveled onto his coffin. Then came silence. He described the sheer terror of the void, the enveloping darkness, and the inability to move as he imagined worms and insects soon invading his resting place.
Next, he recounted the sound of digging. Macintire was stripped of his burial shroud and unceremoniously transported from his grave to a dissection table. He overheard the voices of students and doctors entering the room for a lecture in which he was to play a central role. It was the sensation of a knife cutting into his chest that finally roused him from his paralyzed state. The doctors, realizing their “corpse” wasn’t entirely deceased, managed to revive him.
1. Snatching Bodies Before Burials
While the classic image of grave robbing involves shadowy figures in moonlit cemeteries exhuming freshly buried bodies, not all body snatchers waited for interment. In 1830, London police reported recovering nearly 100 bodies stolen directly from homes during wakes, while mourning was still underway. One notorious case involved a well-known grave robber named Clarke, who targeted the body of a four-year-old girl laid out in a nurse’s home. After scouting the location, Clarke shared a drink with the nurse in honor of the deceased. He later returned, exploiting the nurse’s drunken slumber to steal the child’s body.
The body was recovered by an officer who recognized Clarke during an attempted sale. Clarke was arrested and sentenced to six months in jail. Not all stolen bodies were destined for medical research; some were ransomed back to grieving families, while others were used in even stranger schemes. Bodies of suicide victims, awaiting coroner examination, were often stolen and sold to surgeons or teachers. The snatchers would then report the sale to the police, who would seize the body and return it to supposed relatives—often the snatchers themselves, who would repeat the cycle.
